


So Long Ago, So Well

by ash818



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, futurefluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-14
Updated: 2014-04-14
Packaged: 2018-01-19 08:52:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1463221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ash818/pseuds/ash818
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A month ago, Felicity personally licked the envelope with this evening’s engraved invitation, and not for a moment did she expect Laurel Lance to accept.</p><p>But here the woman is on the Queens' raw silk sofa, rubbing Felicity's belly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So Long Ago, So Well

Laurel Lance has not set foot in this house in five years, not since it was rebuilt after the fire. It was not for lack of asking by every single member of the Queen family, both individually and collectively. She must have turned them down dozens of times. A month ago, Felicity personally licked the envelope with this evening’s engraved invitation, and not for a moment did she expect Laurel to accept.

But the RSVP came promptly, and now here the woman is, statuesque in midnight blue and seated next to Felicity on the raw silk sofa.

“May I?” Laurel says.

“Of course. It’s probably good luck, like rubbing the Buddha’s belly.” Felicity has let plenty of people feel the kicking or just the strange, miraculous bump that is both part of her and not part of her. She runs her hands over it herself sometimes, a little in awe of the bizarre naturalness of this whole process. Oliver likes to kiss it, right on her belly button, which very recently went from innie to outie.

 _Oliver_. She can’t help glancing around the warm, glittering room full of smiling, glittering people until she finds him, handsome as always in black tie. Laurel’s eyes follow hers.

“He’ll be good at this,” Laurel says, sinking back into the sofa cushions. Her hand lingers on Felicity’s belly, then slips back into her lap. “Whether he thinks so or not.”

It’s not often that Laurel Lance offers up unsolicited compliments to Oliver, in or out of his hearing. Felicity tilts her head. “What makes you say so?”  
Laurel smiles into her cranberry-soda. No vodka. Not anymore. Felicity’s actually grateful, since everyone else at the annual Queen family Christmas party is walking around with beautiful cocktails, and it’s hard to watch. She’s been in need of a drink since the moment she saw the blue lines appear eight months ago.

“You should have seen him with Thea when she was little,” Laurel says, shaking her head fondly. The perfect mermaid waves of her hair gently brush her perfect cheekbones.

Felicity consciously chooses not to think about how puffy her face feels these days. “He was a good big brother?”

“Once, when we were in high school…” Laurel starts, and Felicity can’t help leaning forward. The Queens and the Lances have known too much grief and uncovered too many hideous secrets to talk freely about the past. If she wants to know about the boy her husband used to be, she has to pay attention. “It wasn’t anything dramatic. Not like pulling her from a house fire.”

Felicity doesn’t like to think about that night. She must telegraph her distaste, because Laurel quickly picks up the story again.

“We were juniors, I think, so Thea must have been six or seven. Ollie, Tommy, and I were in the kitchen, heating up Bagel Bites as an afterschool snack. Then Thea came in with tears just streaming down her face.”

Felicity glances at the willowy girl in the sophisticated sheath dress, chatting casually with QC’s head of Human Resources over by the fireplace. Those big brown eyes must have looked even bigger on a first grader. “What happened?”

“Something was wrong with her parakeet. Perchy. He was lying on the bottom of his cage, and he wouldn’t get up.”

“Oh, no.”

“As soon as Oliver saw her crying, it was like he turned into this whole other boy I’d never met before. He picked her right up, and he carried her back upstairs to her room to have a look at the bird.”

“Was Perchy an ex-parakeet?” Felicity says gently.

“Tommy couldn’t resist a pining for the fjords joke either.” Laurel’s smile is always a little bit sad, if you know her, but a different kind of shadow passes across her face now. Felicity knows it well; she’s seen it on Oliver. It’s gone as fast as it came. “It went right over Thea’s head, but I thought Ollie was going to hit him. So Tommy wrapped the bird up in a hand towel, and we tucked him in a shoebox—”

“What kind of shoe box?” Felicity cannot resist asking.

“One of Moira’s Manolo Blahniks, actually. And then all four of us went outside to bury him under the oak tree.”

“That oak tree?” Felicity says, startled. “The one where - “

Sad or not, the smile is gone. “There weren’t any headstones there then.”

Robert Queen is sharing his final resting place with a parakeet in a designer shoebox. It could be funny, but instead it makes Felicity want to sniffle a bit. So many things do, lately. But there was one thing especially that caught her attention: “What did you mean, Oliver was like another boy?”

“You didn’t know him before he… went missing,” Laurel says slowly, and a few years ago that might have rankled. They had so much history between them, Laurel and Ollie. Even in the certainty that Oliver loved her, there was a time when Felicity couldn’t quite forget whom he’d loved first, and longer.

Now all she feels about it can be summed up as, “I know he was different then.”

Laurel nods. “I used to complain that he never took anything completely seriously.” Somehow, this sounds neither bitter nor critical, and for the thousandth time Felicity revises her opinion of Laurel. “Honestly, the devil may care attitude was part of his charm – part of what made him fun and exciting. But it was a little careless too, you know?”

“It’s hard to imagine,” Felicity says mildly. The Oliver she found bleeding in her backseat – the grim, single-minded, humorless bastard – was not the grinning kid in the TMZ pictures. The one who woke up next to her this morning, whose eyes always look bluer when he’s making solemn promises, is difficult to reconcile with either of the previous versions.

Laurel sighs. “Thea was crying, and he took it one hundred percent seriously. The way he talked to her… He was sixteen, she was six, and somehow he knew exactly what to say. ‘It’s okay to cry, Perchy was a good bird, he loved you, it’s okay to miss him. Let’s give him a really good send-off, Speedy. Tell him goodbye, tell him how much he meant to you.’ He even wiped her snot on his sleeves.”

Perhaps that was when Laurel started to fall for him. That would have done it for Felicity, she’s pretty sure. Slick Oliver can be charming, in his cheeseball way, but sincere Oliver is irresistible. “Big brother Oliver would definitely have been worth seeing.”

Brilliant, self-possessed Laurel completely fails to formulate a reply.

Felicity sighs. One day soon she will exert total control over her own mouth. Tonight she’ll have to settle for damage control. “I’m so sorry, Laurel. You hear that click?” She taps her jawline, right by her ear. “That was the brain-to-mouth filter engaging. We can just pretend I never said all of that. Please finish the story.”

“No, you’re right,” Laurel says quietly. The careful way she looks at Felicity makes it feel like a test of some kind. “That was when.”

Felicity tilts her head. “I’m glad you saw who he could be, even back then.”

Whatever the test was, she passed. Laurel smiles into her lap and it is, as always, a little sad. “I’m glad I was right about him, back then.”

“Hey.” Felicity reaches for Laurel’s hand. “He’s kicking.”

Laurel rubs her belly. It really is good luck.


End file.
